New Leader Has Pakistan's Taliban on Rise

Pakistan’s increasingly organized Islamist insurgency has a powerful new leader in Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused of masterminding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. A Time profile reveals Mehsud to be formidably charismatic individual possessing a “laser-like focus” to rival even that of mentor Mullah Omar, the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban movement.

"Baitullah is much stronger, much better," says an al-Jazeera reporter in comparing the 30-something Pakistani to Mullah Omar. "His way of talking, how he acts—he is a much more powerful leader. … These militant leaders now, they are living in the eye of the storm. They learn more in one minute than the Taliban did in a year." (More Benazir Bhutto stories.)